The Internet radio show will take place in the first half hour. Our guest will be Steven Dean, global healthcare segment lead for Freescale Semiconductor. An electronics engineer with more than 25 years of experience in the medical device and semiconductor fields, Dean will discuss the role of electronics in medical devices, ranging from heart monitoring systems to imaging machinery. He'll examine recent advances in semiconductor devices, and he will talk about how those advancements are leading to a new breed of medical products.

During our interview, you'll be able to type your questions for Dean via an instant chat window. We'll work some of those questions into our live discussion. At the half-hour mark, the radio portion will end, and Dean will engage listeners via the instant chat for an additional 30 minutes.

We invite you to register for "Embedded Angles for Medical Products" here, and we hope you enjoy the broadcast.

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Yes, this is one of the hottest areas in electronics. Plus, the manufacturing of medical equipment is highly complex (high mix low volume), so it tends to stay in North America. It's one of the shinning starts of North American manufactruing.

Rob, so this is one of the higher-value types of manufacturing you mentioned (in a different post's thread) that's remained here in the US, and not been offshored. What are the other app areas that have stayed here?

From what I've seen, the big areas in manufacturing that will not get outsourced include medical, defense, aerospace, and any other manufacturing that includes "high mix, low volume." Defense, of course, remains for security reasons.

Heavy items, of course, need to be close to their end consumers. So if white box goods (washers, dryers, fridges, dishwashers) get outsoruced, it tends to be close to home (Mexico for North America, East Europe for Europe).

Cars, too, need to be close to home. We benefit from Japan opening factories here producing cars for U.S. consumption.

Just because production is in North America, that doesn't necessarily mean outsourcing is out. There are tons of manufacturers in North America (particularly in the Midwest) that provide outsourced manufacturing services to fellow North American companies.

I'm intrigued by some of the medical electronics developments we've seen in the last few years, Rob. We've seen implantable defbrillators that call the emergency room while the patient sleeps. (I've heard stories of paramedics arriving at the door of a patient and waking them up, based on a call from the defibrillator). We've heard of companies that are developing portable MRIs that could be rolled out onto a football field to check players. We've heard of Band-Aid-sized heart monitors. These are some of the things we're planning to discuss with our guest, Steven Dean.

Charles has clearly portrayed the amazing developments in medical domain which are definitely improving the clinical workflow and also imprvoing point of care solutions which in addition to the portabolity and low power solutions are the medical device market drivers.

Yes, I too have been hearing about a lot of developments. I've been hearing about a surge in home-based monitoring equipment like the defibrillators you mentioned. I hear there's a wide range of home equipment that connects in one way or another to a medical facility. These consumer-based devices have the added promise of higher volume production than devices for medical facilities.

Thanks, Rob. That's an interesting answer. High mix low volume makes a lot of sense. What didn't occur to me before was also heavy items--doh! Also, I thought I'd heard that the manufacturing of practically all consumer electronics, including white box goods but not cars, had moved offshore, presumably to Asia.

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